Aussie CEO: Women are like men, only cheaper!

[davidn3600]

At a Sydney technology startup conference, Evan Thornley, an Australian multimillionaire and co-founder of online advertising company LookSmart (LOOK), gave a talk about why he likes to hire women. “The Australian labor market and world labor market just consistently and amazingly undervalues women in so many roles, particularly in our industry,” he said. When LookSmart went public on Nasdaq in 1999, he said, it was one of the few tech companies that had more women than men on its senior management team. “Call me opportunistic; I thought I could get better people with less competition because we were willing to understand the skills and capabilities that many of these woman had,” Thornley said.

Wow, how insightful! Not only has someone in the tech industry openly admitted to a pay discrepancy, but he’s framed it in a way that might help companies see the value in hiring more women and close—or at least narrow—the gender gap.

Thornley went on to say that by hiring women, he got better-qualified employees to whom he was able to give more responsibility. “And they were still often relatively cheap compared to what we would’ve had to pay someone less good of a different gender,” he concluded. To illustrate his point he showed a slide that said: “Women: Like Men, Only Cheaper.”

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Thornley has, naturally, been roundly criticized for calling women cheap labor. “WT actual f—” Annie Parker, co-founder of Australian digital start-up accelerator Muru-D, tweeted after images of Thornley’s slide were made public. A news site Australia even titled its article: “Well S—, That Was a Dumb Thing to Do at a Startup Conference.” Thornley has since apologized for and backtracked on his comments, writing online that “I have always paid men and women exactly the same for the same work and you will find a large group of fantastic talented women I’ve worked with who will vouch for that.” (LookSmart did not respond to requests for comment.)

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-09-22/tech-start-up-founder-says-women-are-like-men-only-cheaper

Apparently many in the audience were visibly offended. Some attendees took to twitter to call the presentation "cringe-worthy" and "outright sexism."

[seabeyond]

1. start digging. slap some suits on him and dig. let him prove he has ALWAYS paid sexes equally. nt

[BillZBubb]

2. Actually, what he meant (I think) was positive. How he said it was idiotic.

In the tech field if you try to hire someone with experience and a certain skill set, you probably could hire a woman with a lower starting offer than a man. That isn't his fault, it is because other tech companies under pay their female employees.

Say for instance the position has a salary of $100K. To leave another job and come to work for you, someone really good would expect a 15% raise. If in the industry, the people you are looking for have a salary range of 80-90K, and women are generally on the low end, who's most likely going to grab your offer? I think that is his point.